From The Captain's Book
You need to remember that droids are not human beings. Not that any of us were experts, but we'd all seen droids, and I'd read articles and watched study cubes on them in Genetic Engineering 415. Droids are close to human. They look human. But if you'd ever been around droids, you'd know the difference.
Droids have no parents. They don't grow from the fertilization of an ovum by a sperm. They are, or were, manufactured under imperial license, and develop in vats from raw, synthesized genetic material engineered to the legal specifications of the purchaser.
And a droid learns differently. It doesn't grow up over a period of years, learning in life and in child academies. Like a real person, the droid starts out with basic biological parameters programmed into their DNA. But that's just a small start. Then, in little more than two years, with exact electro-chemical stimulation, it develops to adult size still unconscious in the vats, and gets "primary nurture programming" imprinted into its unconscious mind during the last days before its removal. This imprinting includes basic Interspeak. So when it's taken from the vat, it is physically mature, but mentally it's more like a small child.
With one big difference. Unlike little children, droids have no personality; they are not persons. And under usual procedures they are still unconscious at that stage. Normally they get shipped to the purchaser in stasis. The purchaser gives them their function programming after delivery and immediately before removal from their stasis cocoons. Then, when wakened from their cocoons, they're already trained adults. Ordinarily.
Aboard the Larvest we had 600 of them in stasis, pleasure droids engineered to amuse: 500 females and 100 males designed and built to order for Hedone, a resort world. They looked very much like beautiful human beings, very aesthetic and guaranteed very healthy. But the ones we had only had primary nurture programming; in most respects they were mentally like sleeping three-year-olds who could understand basic speech. And we didn't have the equipment to give them function programming. If we had, it would have been an entirely different situation. But as it was, fifteen crew members would have had to bring up and educate what would amount to 600 less-than-human three-year-olds with fully-grown adult bodies and little social sense.
It would have been impossible. And it would have left us no time or energy to produce a livable environment on a raw new world. There wasn't even any way we could feed them for longer than a day or so.
So we offloaded them on the lesser continent. We wanted them to survive if they could, though that wasn't a high-priority consideration. The climate there was livable, and there seemed to be no life forms at all comparable in danger to the savage packs of predatory sauroids on the major continent. The AG dollies still worked then, the antigravity cargo handlers, and with them we unloaded the droids onto a large grassy meadow. Then we set the cocoon controls on wake.
One of the crew, a biotech named Lori Maloi, had asked to stay with them awhile and try to teach them enough to survive. Sweet, impractical Lori. And Captain Terlenter let her; I suppose he felt uncomfortable about dumping them. I helped her put together a survival chest, with a side arm for protection, and the captain said he'd send someone in a week to see how things were, and to pick her up if she wanted. He couldn't know that, within three hours, we'd lose our flight capacity, including the ability to launch small craft.
None of us, perhaps not even Lori, expected her to accomplish much with the droids. What we did expect was that they'd gobble up their emergency wafers the first day and then sit around, or maybe have an orgy, until they got hungry. After that they'd probably wander off and starve, Or get killed by predators. And that's almost certainly what did happen. After all, they were pleasure droids, pleasure droids with the minds of little children.
And if some of them did survive for long, which is conceivable, the chances are they had no viable offspring. They were designed to perform sex, but engineering fertility into droids is somewhat tricky and very expensive; otherwise lethal flaws during the embryogenesis of prospective offspring are usual. And assuming these droids didn't come from a bootleg plant, or maybe even if they did, they were probably engineered to be sterile, to avoid the mental trauma of miscarriages, still-births, and defective infants. Most design approvals require it. After all, droids may not be human, but they are living, feeling creatures.
* * *
It was Festival in Hrumma, the Festival of the Serpents Returning, and the weather was beautiful, as always in that season. The city of Theedalit was ready, and lovely in the sun. The white walls of its buildings had been scrubbed, many whitewashed anew, their trim fresh-painted in gold or orange-red, blue or green or scarlet. The red and maroon tiles of cisterns, roof skirts and parapets gleamed in the sun. Fruit trees on roof tops glinted glossy green. Above windows and balconies, the colorful awnings had been scrubbed and often re-dyed, while below them, bunting draped white and red and blue. Above it all, vivid banners and pennants waved and fluttered proudly in the usual onshore wind of day, while around the perimeters, tall windmills, pride of the city, whirled long and colorful vanes in the same brisk breeze that made the pennants snap.
Country people, flocking to Theedalit afoot and on saddle kaabors, in shays and carriages, stopped where the road overlooked the city, to absorb the vista, eyes watering at the glare from distant walls and windows.
The sidewalks too had been scrubbed, like most of the townspeople who walked them that day. Those who could afford it wore new clothes; most of the rest wore clean. Even the kaabors drawing ordinary carts wore collars of flowers, while those that drew the hansoms, carriages, and shays of the well-to-do most often wore embroidered caparisons, and feathers on their short-cropped horns. The rikksha men, glistening with sweat, wore their most vivid loincloths, and long plumes of the riiki thrust into bright, knitted bands that kept the sweat from their eyes. At stands and racks in every alcove and on the very streets and sidewalks, artisans hawked jewelry, sometimes of silver, now and then of gold, though more often of simple copper or bronze, hammered, twisted, etched and polished, inset with semi-precious stones. People, mostly young to elderly couples, strolled and looked, dickered in good humor, and occasionally bought.
And there was much laughter, for though it was too early for the sale of wine and spirits, there was a sense of relaxed anticipation. On the opening evening of Festival, the amirr and the House of Nobles would stage a feast; the fire pits had been burning for a day already, while barrels waited in the deepest, coolest cellars of the Fortress to be brought up when the heat of day was past. And after the feast, there would be parties in gardens and courtyards, on terraces and rooftops. Few would sleep alone except by preference or incapacity.
* * *
The crowds could be heard from the balcony where the naamir sat with her son and youngest daughter. The youth, eighteen, lolled against cushions on a shaded couch. He was tall like his father, the amirr, and had his father's curly auburn hair. But he was still slender, and there was a catlike languor about him.
The girl, on the other hand, was somewhat small for a Hrummean, newly-turned sixteen and only now maturing physically. Standing by an easel, brush in hand, she frowned at an effect. Her subject was the lower reach of town, and the harbor; her treatment was impressionistic, a style she was just learning.
Her brother eyed it from where he reclined. "Don't ask me what I think of it," he drawled.
"I won't," she snapped.
He felt his mother's disapproving glance, and sniggered just short of audibility. Harassing his sister was a sport he'd enjoyed most of his life, not because he particularly disliked her but because she was available and usually reacted. He could no longer reduce her to tears, nor tried. His father's heavy hand had ended that years earlier. But he'd sensitized her enough that he could often anger or introvert her with little more than a word, occasionally a look.
The naamir laid down her embroidery and went over to examine the painting. "It seems to me you're making progress," she said.
The girl shook her head. "I can't get the effect I want—the sun sparkling on the water. And Allfon won't be back till after Festival."
Her brother brayed derisively. "Allfon! At least we don't need to worry that his hands will stray when he's working with you. He's likelier to make a try at me."
His mother's lips thinned. "Tirros Hanorissio," she said, "one more snide remark and your father will hear of it."
He lowered his eyes, neither sniggering nor smirking now. He knew his mother well: Normally her tolerance was greater than this, but she left little margin between threat and act. He remembered the last time she'd complained to his father, a year earlier. In angry exasperation, the amirr had grasped Tirros's narrow nose between strong thumb and forefinger and forced him to his knees. The next day, at weapons drill, Master Gorrik's wooden training sword had left the young mirj welted and discolored, and later in his suite, examining the bruises and abrasions in his dressing mirror, Tirros had wept with frustrated anger.
Remembering it, he lay imagining what he would do, someday, to Gorrik, avoiding for now thoughts of what he'd enjoy doing to his sister. Then faintly he heard a trumpet call from the main tower at the Fortress, seat of government in Hrumma. His immediate thought was that the first serpents had been seen entering the harbor, for this was the date it would happen, invariably did happen. But the Fortress bells did not begin the festive clamor that would proclaim their entry. Nor the measured resonant tolling of impending attack, a sound he'd heard at the biannual drills. This was a signal to alert the harbor defense flotilla, and the battalion of troops domiciled near the Fortress.
But an alert to what? Tirros got smoothly to his feet and went to the balustrade, his sharp eyes finding the watchtower on the hill above the harbor entrance. Three of its flagstaffs flew large flags, and even at this distance his sharp young eyes made out their colors. The first told him a foreign ship was coming, the second that it was a warship, and the third that only one had been seen. Without excusing himself, he turned and left the balcony. He'd stop for his sword, have a groom saddle his kaabor, then ride to the Fortress. Even now, someone at the watchtower would be fastening a message to the leg of a kiruu, to send it winging. More than one, in case a hawk should spy and catch the first enroute.
Something exciting, interesting at least, might finally be about to happen here. One could hope. At least it was more promising than the arrival of the sea serpents. That happened every year.
* * *
The great bells exulted in the Fortress's clock tower, bonging and clanging in an orgy of bronze sonority. The serpents had entered the harbor! Now the rains would begin, and the weather turn truly warm; the crops would grow, the orchards flower, and the nation continue to prosper.
In the great gate house, the Chamber of Ministers had wide, strong doors, hinged to move at a touch, giving onto the broad top of the Fortress wall. The amirr's personal secretary went over and pushed them to, then closed window shutters and drew their weather curtains, somewhat dulling the din. In the resulting semi-dark, conversation became practical again, but no one spoke.
His expression patient, the amirr waited for the clangor to still. At his back, a bit removed, stood guards, their presence a matter of protocol more than protection. Around the oval table sat the amirr's chief ministers and a few others. Most were dressed in ceremonial togas—all but the guards and the young Tirros—togas for official celebration. They'd gathered unexpectedly because of the strange ship approaching their shore.
Just before the bells had interrupted, old Viravvo had recalled from his youth, some five decades earlier, a story from Djez Gorrbul of such a ship landing there, with strange men whose speech no one understood. They had harmed no one or any thing, had presented gifts and received gifts in return, then departed westward, never to be seen again. Their visit had been brief, the exchanges and impacts minor. Communication had been by simple gestures with simple content, and the whole affair had soon been forgotten.
After a long minute the bells stopped, leaving heads still ringing and hearing momentarily dimmed. The secretary drew back curtains, respread shutters and opened doors. Welcome yellow sunlight poured in. When the man was seated again, the amirr spoke.
"So. Seemingly such strangers will be entering our harbor, and on the same day as the serpents." He looked at his privy counselor. "Allbarin, could this be an omen?"
"I believe 'a beginning' comes closer than 'an omen,' " Allbarin answered.
"Perhaps," said a minister, "it has come from Djez Gorrbul, intending ill for us."
"Doubtful," said a third. "Gameliiu is an avaricious king but not a bold one. Certainly he has no ship of his own like that."
"If it's as large as it's said to be," put in another, "it could be full of hidden soldiers, intending to catch the city in Festival and the Fortress open."
The amirr turned to the guard captain in charge of the shift—Eltrienn Cadriio, a centurion in rank. Cadriio wore working uniform, legs bare and muscular between greaves and kilt, his bronze breastplate polished, the plume on his helmet fresh and bright. "Centurion," said the amirr, "how long ago was it that you left Haipoor l'Djezzer?"
"Four weeks, Your Lordship, and—two days."
"And you smelled no hint of war or other action against us, or of any such ship landing on their coast?"
"Correct, Your Eminence. The palace guard there hears and repeats many rumors. It would be astonishing if such plans or events went unremarked. My major problem as a spy was not acquiring information but sorting the true from the false. Their attention is currently on Djez Seechul and their disputed territory on the upper Vaski River."
The amirr turned to his privy counselor. "And Hrum has not whispered anything to you of their intentions?"
The counselor shook his head. "Nothing, Your Eminence."
"Well then." His gaze moved to an older man, robed but also helmeted. "General," he said, "the ship will surely enter our harbor. Why else would it be approaching? See that you have troops ready and visible, but not prominent and certainly not threatening. Commodore, have your flotilla manned, oars in place. Let the marines be ashore, at hand but out of sight, ready to board instantly should the trumpet signal." He looked around. "Allbarin has not divined an attack, and Eltrienn has not overheard of one, so we will not stand truculent. But neither will we ignore common caution.
"Does anyone have anything to add? Comments? Questions? Allbarin?"
The privy counselor nodded. "Your Eminence, from its course, if the vessel lands here—when the vessel lands here—a scanner should be gotten aboard it. Perhaps in the guise of a shipbuilder wishing to examine its construction."
"Of course." The amirr scanned the ministers. "Anything else? No? Then you may go, all but Trenno and Allbarin. I have things for you two to do." As in afterthought, he turned to his son, who stood behind him to his left. "Tirros, you stay too. I expect the foreigners will send a person of rank ashore, and I'll want you by me then. The experience may be valuable to you."
* * *
On the headland, some six hundred feet above the water, a crowd of half a thousand sat or stood in clusters, watching the great, tall ship as it neared the harbor's mouth. The grass beneath them was tawny dry, and the ground puffed underfoot wherever anyone walked. Yet the crowd was so intent on the vessel that few paid any attention at all to the rain-bringing serpents sporting in the harbor.
From time unremembered, the sea serpents had arrived at the summer solstice to give birth to their young. It was about the time when the tropical current, in its annual northward shift, filled the onshore airflow with warmth and moisture, destabilizing it. And the summer rains began.
One of the people watching was a man with dark stubble on his skull, and a thin beard streaked white. In general, the distant descendants of the droids had little facial hair, too little for an attractive beard. Thus in Hrumma, beards were exceedingly rare, and in general, reserved for sages or any who was called a sage. Those near the man kept glancing at him, as if hoping he'd speak, for when Panni Vempravvo said something, beyond a minimum of transactional communication, it could easily be valuable.
He spoke infrequently though, in public, and seldom went far from his cave. Just now he sat on the drought-crisped bunchgrass with his legs folded under him, his eyes calm and steady on the ship.
It had approached rapidly, without even a patch of sail, and seemed scarcely to slow as it entered the half-mile-wide Firth of Theed. A thin, mile-long streamer of black smoke trailed from a tall object near the stern, seemingly a kind of slender chimney, jutting up from a deckhouse. It was as if some great stove lay within, for some unfathomable purpose.
"Perhaps the ship is a giant crematorium," someone said.
"What purpose could there be in bringing a giant crematorium here?" asked another. Faces turned sober at the question. Someone suggested that Hrum, in his aspect of death-bringer, could be driving the ship; it could be coming to harvest the people of Theedalit. A third began to argue that the people of Theedalit and all of Hrumma followed the Way of Hrum better than any other people. A fourth interrupted to insist that it was exactly the self-righteous that deserved it most.
Panni Vempravvo's mouth opened and laughter pealed forth, a startling bell-like sound. Those who'd been arguing fell uncomfortably silent, reminded that argument had nothing to do with truth.
Near an edge of the crowd, standing instead of sitting, was another with a beard. His hair was blond, his thin beard curly and unabashedly red, his face unlined. He was surrounded by a small group of followers, country people by their traveling garb, all looking to have come a long way. Their faces bore smears of mud, a product of road dust and the wiping of sweat.
Occasionally a would-be sage, a "country sage," arose in the hinterland, and usually, city folk paid them only the respect of tolerance unless they proved themselves. Which happened seldom, especially away from the sea, for the sea was where Hrum's principal attention resided. In this one's entourage, though, were two who wore master's robes, which surely commended his claim.
Now, looking at no one, his eyes on the ship as it steamed up the firth, he spoke as if to himself, though his voice was loud and clear. The sentences were spaced apart, as if stating separate cognitions.
"The foreign vessel is no crematorium."
Faces turned to the country sage.
"Fire drives the ship, fire contained within an iron belly, and men cast charcoal into it."
Fire drives the ship? It seemed unlikely. And what kind of ship would be driven by fire?
"It has come from a land far west over the ocean, a land of which we've never heard."
A few faces looked openly dubious at this. The general view was that the ocean went on unbroken till it had gone full circle and met their own, opposite, eastern coast. Some of his listeners found questions rising, but they kept their peace for now. One did not interrupt a sage, or someone who might be a sage.
More than a few eyes had sought Panni Vempravvo, to see how he was receiving all this. Panni was watching the country sage, and his wide mouth smiled through the scant and drooping white-streaked mustache.
"The ship will leave an ambassador at the city," the country sage went on, "an ambassador from a great and distant king. And the great king intends ill for Hrumma."
Faces showed concern now, and alarm, and for the first time some showed clear rejection. No one wanted to believe this; historically kings had meant trouble. Hrumma had had kings itself, a long time ago, and after a period of turbulence, had discontinued the office. Also, for a few generations, more than a millenium past—an era storied for its oppressions—she'd been ruled by a series of foreign kings, of Djez Gorrbul.
"The ship will leave gifts, as well as an ambassador," the country sage continued. "And trouble will follow it here.
"And a bad sign will accompany its arrival."
Eyes went to the ship again, as if looking for the bad sign.
"Look!" someone shouted, pointing. Beneath the water, shadowy shapes showed suddenly, speeding seaward through the harbor mouth—long necks, oval bodies, tapering tails—perhaps two dozen of them. The sea serpents were leaving the firth!
There was no outcry, no jabbering, only momentary silence. Then Panni Vempravvo chuckled, nodding. The country sage turned his quiet, serious eyes to Panni without smiling, then bowed. Panni unwound his long thin legs, rising, and left with his followers. After a minute, the country sage and his people also left, in the tracks of the elder.